Vettel had a couple of moments, missing the apex. But Hamilton had a two obvious lock-ups. AD said those mistakes caused Ham to lose the P1. Basically said Hamilton made bigger mistakes. And what Hamilton said to Webber after the session was kind of a dig at RB drivers that others love to do.

I doubt considering comments about how difficult passing will be. Ferrari have also identified that its qualification where they lack most so it would perhaps be counter intuitive to bias the set-up further away from that.

Amazing job by Hamilton and Vettel but come on guys also give some respect to Schumacher. He smashed Rosberg and put that pretty crap Mercedes on P6, i think he did a fantastic job today, it makes me sad he hasn't gotten a good car in all his comeback years with Mercedes.

Vettel had a couple of moments, missing the apex. But Hamilton had a two obvious lock-ups. AD said those mistakes caused Ham to lose the P1. Basically said Hamilton made bigger mistakes. And what Hamilton said to Webber after the session was kind of a dig at RB drivers that others love to do.

If the car does a certain time, that obviously means it's capable of doing said time. Damon Hill knows that, I have to assume he's just playing along with the usual media-cheerleading.

Anyway, the track isn't as disappointing as I had thought it would be, though I'm still of the opinion that a good number of corners could've been cut. When did a 1:20 laptime become too short?

I can't believe such a simple thing is so hard to understand, Damon Hill is simply saying to put that McLaren so close to the Redbull takes driving that is far superior to the RedBull drivers since the RedBull is so obviously quicker. Its not rocket science!

Vettel had a couple of moments, missing the apex. But Hamilton had a two obvious lock-ups. AD said those mistakes caused Ham to lose the P1. Basically said Hamilton made bigger mistakes. And what Hamilton said to Webber after the session was kind of a dig at RB drivers that others love to do.

To put it another way, the McLaren is the more difficult car to drive near the limit, so the driver has to push harder/fight the car more to get a good lap time out of it and only a select few drivers are capable of doing that. Lewis is one of those drivers.

I agree with you. I think Lewis is close to becoming the class of the field...he is improving with age and IMO will continue to improve. He and Seb were miles ahead of the opposition today, though Alonso didn't have much chance in that Ferrari which is absolutely horrible in qualy.

I certainly did! Whitmarsh looked thoroughly miserable after qualy, and he sounded underwhelmed by Lewis's great performance. But hey, Lewis has only 2 more races for McLaren, so why should we care!

Some Hamilton fan need a reality check again. Class of the field? He belongs to the top three in a row with Alonso and Vettel. His performance was great. Kudos! But we know he is a perfect qualifier like Seb. Lewis didn't show he is a class above him. The track was improving and his car was up to pace. But some fans want to believe Red Bull was 1sec quicker

11 poles for Webber in the same car. Compare that to Hamilton's record of 8 poles against a single pole from Button.

And then compare Webber's qualifying skill's to Button.

Look at their record vs their previous team-mates:

Button:worse average grid position than Ralf Schumacher in 2000worse than Fisichella in 2001worse than Trulli in 2002worse than Villeneuve but better than Sato in 2003better than Sato in 2004better than Sato in 2005worse than Barrichello in 2006better than Barrichello in 2007better than Barrichello in 2008worse in Barrichello in 2009then Hamilton

Webberbetter than both Davidson and Young in 2002better than both Wilson and Pizzonia in 2003better than Klien in 2004better than both Heidfeld and Pizzonia in 2005better than Rosberg in 2006better than Coulthard in 2007better than Coulthard in 2008then Vettel

So the conclusion is that Webber has outqualified all his pre-Vettel F1 team-mates and most of them with significant margin, while the only team-mate against who Button had a superior qualifying record was Sato.Is it fair to conclude that Webber is better qualifier then?

Some Hamilton fan need a reality check again. Class of the field? He belongs to the top three in a row with Alonso and Vettel. His performance was great. Kudos! But we know he is a perfect qualifier like Seb. Lewis didn't show he is a class above him. The track was improving and his car was up to pace. But some fans want to believe Red Bull was 1sec quicker

All very true. But did you really expect SV to be challenged for pole? Really?

So the analysis is that Hamilton had a crap lap. It was all the magical timing fairy.

Like usual. If it would be Button having Hamilton time, people would say how Sennasque that lap was, how completed driver Button is, and how miserable his team is, and only Button bringing it together.

Literally everyone in motorsport knows this, I don't see why some people get their knickers in a twist when people say someone is outperforming a car.

"But if a car performs to that level, it is necessarily capable of that time" they cry.

Obviously, it's called a figure of speech which is used as a hyperbole mechanism to emphasise what they feel is a particularly strong performance. What people are essentially saying in that situation is that a driver has outperformed the projected speed of the car based on the car's current handling and previous laptimes, and exceeded what was thought to be a reasonable laptime. They're not saying people are defying the laws of space and time...

Button:worse average grid position than Ralf Schumacher in 2000worse than Fisichella in 2001worse than Trulli in 2002worse than Villeneuve but better than Sato in 2003better than Sato in 2004better than Sato in 2005worse than Barrichello in 2006better than Barrichello in 2007better than Barrichello in 2008worse in Barrichello in 2009then Hamilton

Webberbetter than both Davidson and Young in 2002better than both Wilson and Pizzonia in 2003better than Klien in 2004better than both Heidfeld and Pizzonia in 2005better than Rosberg in 2006better than Coulthard in 2007better than Coulthard in 2008then Vettel

So the conclusion is that Webber has outqualified all his pre-Vettel F1 team-mates and most of them with significant margin, while the only team-mate against who Button had a superior qualifying record was Sato.Is it fair to conclude that Webber is better qualifier then?

erm, have looked at who Webber is qualifying against!!! Are you being serious or sarcastic???

Button:worse average grid position than Ralf Schumacher in 2000worse than Fisichella in 2001worse than Trulli in 2002worse than Villeneuve but better than Sato in 2003better than Sato in 2004better than Sato in 2005worse than Barrichello in 2006better than Barrichello in 2007better than Barrichello in 2008worse in Barrichello in 2009then Hamilton

Webberbetter than both Davidson and Young in 2002better than both Wilson and Pizzonia in 2003better than Klien in 2004better than both Heidfeld and Pizzonia in 2005better than Rosberg in 2006better than Coulthard in 2007better than Coulthard in 2008then Vettel

So the conclusion is that Webber has outqualified all his pre-Vettel F1 team-mates and most of them with significant margin, while the only team-mate against who Button had a superior qualifying record was Sato.Is it fair to conclude that Webber is better qualifier then?

I may be wrong, but I get the impression that the line up of R Schumacher, Fisichella, Trulli, Villeneuve and Barichello may just have been a little tougher than Yoong, Davidson, Wilson, Pizzonia, Klien and Coulthard (who only ever defeated Klien in quali of all his teammates), with the exceptions of Rosberg and possibly Heidfeld.

But I'd agree with your general point that on balance, MW is probably a better qualifier than JB.

No I didn't. Like I said, great performance by Lewis. But there is no reason to hype him as it's done by some users

I agree, we don't need hype, such as he is light years ahead of SV or some such. Same for the other way too. What we had was a great battle for pole between the two fastest guys in F1 over a single flying lap.

We should make "Sebastian Vettel Pole Weekend Discussion Thread" so everytime he gets a pole we can just discuss this "the car or the driver" in a separate thread, over and over again, instead of turning every qualifying thread into one every weekend.

I agree, we don't need hype, such as he is light years ahead of SV or some such. Same for the other way too. What we had was a great battle for pole between the two fastest guys in F1 over a single flying lap.

erm, have looked at who Webber is qualifying against!!! Are you being serious or sarcastic???

Well, Klien has a decent record, equal grid position to Coulthard in 2005 and outqualified Senna by more than a second in his first F1 qualifying after 5 years.Coulthard is a multiple race-winner and pole-sitter and Rosberg has beaten all his team-mates bar Webber (even this year he is just in front of Schumi in average grid position despite losing 9-10 head-to-head in single events).Heidfeld has beaten several strong team-mates as well.

If Button has beaten majority of his team-mates in qualifying, we could discuss. But he hasn't.

I don't see why some people get their knickers in a twist when people say someone is outperforming a car.

Simple, because it's feeding a narrative in which the driver is painted as the single most important part of what is in fact a team effort.

You might not find that objectionable, but I like to think that a former world champion like Hill could instead share some more insightful thoughts about how McLaren is taking the fight to Red Bull. Perhaps he has none.

Ah okay, I just thought you did by your lack of arguments against it and trying to switch attention to me for some reason.

You thought I did what? I don't even really understand how your sentence is relevant...

"So you admit that's how the narrative would go in media and everywhere else in that situation? Thank you."

What narrative? What situation?

Ah wait, I see, you're talking about that little dialogue you had with yourself in the first post .

Well, perhaps one or two dyed-in-the-wool Hamilton or McLaren fans here might say that, maybe even a couple of second-rate F1 blogs. As for 'the media and everywhere else', no, that's totally bogus. Firstly trying to condense the world's media into a single entity with one hive-minded viewpoint is absolutely preposterous, let alone 'everywhere else', and secondly, I don't believe it's the case anyway. More likely is your cognitive baises gloss over points you agree with as you take them as 'netural', and take issue with points you disagree with and you take them as 'baised'.

What you said sounds moderately familiar from some of the posters on this forum, but then so does the opposite to what you said, people overplaying routine things from Vettel into him being the next coming of christ.

I often see people on these forums saying things like this though. Say Rosberg crashes, a few people criticise him, some defend him, etc. Inevitably you get someone saying 'if this were Schumacher who crashed, the forum would be in meltdown, there'd be a 20 page thread already, etc.. etc..', basically a mild form of the persecution complex.